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Technical QA Lead

We’re Criterion, and we love making games!

For more than fifteen years we’ve entertained millions of players around the world with our award-winning games. Our experienced people have expressed their passion for excellent game feel, AAA audiovisual quality and technical innovation in the Burnout & Need for Speed series and and more recently in Battlefield 1, Star Wars X-Wing VR, Starfighter Assault and Arcade for Star Wars Battlefront II and Firestorm for Battlefield V.

We believe that healthy, engaged teams make great games, so we place enormous value on collaboration, fresh ideas, and unique perspectives. We’d love to hear yours! Crunch doesn’t help make a better game. We don’t do it. For the past three years we are very proud to have been recognised by gamesindustry.biz as one of the best places to work in the UK. Let’s talk about how you could be a part of it.

The Challenge Ahead

Criterion Games is looking for a QA professional with extensive technical knowledge and leadership experience to join our team as the QA Technical Development Manager. Reporting to the QA Development Director, you will work closely with Development, QA Engineering and Stakeholder teams to establish a strong technical strategy to allow us to meet our project goals in an efficient and effective manner.

What a QA Technical Development Manager does at Criterion

QA Technical Development Manager is accountable for defining, aligning and delivering the QA technical strategy for the project and ensuring the QA team are setup to meet these goals. They will partner directly with Development to safeguard the technical health of the project and partner with QA Engineering to establish strong automation and telemetry plans to facilitate delivery. They will work embedded within the Development organization , drive continuous improvement of the QA practice across EA and actively knowledge share across the organization, have a strong Quality mindset from a consumer perspective, and be a strong advocate and influencer in game design and implementation decisions.

Role Description

A QA Technical Development manager must have a strong technical background with leadership and project management experience. Your focus will be on continually improving the operational efficiency and effectiveness of the QA effort by assessing current quality assurance practices and incorporating new QA strategies. You will work on department level initiatives as well as operational efficiency initiatives.

You will also spend time managing a direct staff of Analysts, mentoring/supporting junior level leadership within the department. Monitoring performance and delivering measurable feedback to direct reports is an essential function of this role. Embrace the challenge of mentoring and supporting a team of direct reports, and contributing to the development of their careers. Establishing effective working relationships within the QA department, the QA project team and the outside business partners are critical to success in this role.

Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

• Establish and deliver the QA Technical Strategy of a AAA title from concept to post-launch.

• Develop QA Technical Analysts, mentoring, training and growing the team, as well as guiding their development.

• QA owner for the development toolchain and technical game systems.

• Driving the identification and resolution of issues hindering development and QA productivity.

• Develop and maintain an intimate understanding of the technical game systems and associated dependencies; proactively share details and changes with the wider QA team.
• Define and maintain the test strategy for all technical game systems, ensuring timely and accurate reporting of status and risk.
• Ensure the effective use of development tools and technologies to drive issue identification upstream and promote defect prevention.

• Collaborate with Development partners and balance Development Support tasks against QA Delivery work.

• Help drive QA evolution championing defect Prevention/Containment and Test Automation.

• Ensure a high standard of reporting is maintained, ensure data is clear, concise, accurate and actionable.

• Actively contribute to strategic planning and ensure plans will deliver projects on time, quality and budget.

• Defines engagement practices and processes: Ensure all workflow is clearly defined, processes are documented, and staff trained in expectations on the workflow.

• Recognise, communicate and mitigate risks to project delivery.

• Proactively make process improvements project wide, identify patterns and new solutions

Key Requirements:

• Passion for quality.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent industry experience.
• Previous game or software development QA experience (5+ years).
• Experience with supporting game engines.
• Experience with test automation.
• Experience with telemetry systems.
• Detail oriented, with strong observational and analytical skills.
• Self-motivated, with the ability to work independently and as part of a team.
• Ability to multitask and prioritize your own work.
• Experience in peer coaching and mentoring.

Desirable:

• Programming, scripting, or database experience, such as C#, Python, JavaScript, T-SQL, or MySQL.
• Experience working with remote teams.
• Experience with applications such as JIRA, Confluence, DevTest or TestRail.
• Experience working with Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban)
• Experience with data analysis and visualization tools such as Power Bi
• Experience with test automation and telemetry systems